Go Go RocketParty

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:53:55 -0500

““Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.””

- ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"Trubridge passes 100 feet, 150 feet, 200 feet. Almost two minutes into the dive, the..."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:44:02 -0500

““Trubridge passes 100 feet, 150 feet, 200 feet. Almost two minutes into the dive, the sonar-monitoring official announces “touchdown”—at 305 feet—and begins monitoring Trubridge’s progress on the way back up. After a total of 3 minutes and 43 seconds, I see Trubridge rematerialize from the shadows. A few more strokes and he surfaces, exhales, removes his goggles, gives the high sign, and says in his crisp New Zealand accent, “I’m OK.” He looks bored, his body and brain seemingly unaffected by the fact that he just swam—without fins, without anything—30 stories down.””

- (via Outside Online - Open Your Mouth and You’re Dead)

"“About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target..."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:27:35 -0500

“

“About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.” “

”

- (via NY Times

Enceladus in Saturnshine

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:02:25 -0500

Enceladus in Saturnshine

"Now you’ve got theme park rides as the source material of movies. The only things left are breakfast..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:18:25 -0500

““Now you’ve got theme park rides as the source material of movies. The only things left are breakfast cereal mascots. In our lifetime, we will see Johnny Depp playing Captain Crunch.””

- (Alan Moore via Co.Create)

"I think it’s often been portrayed as artists versus pirates. That isn’t accurate at all. The..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:36:00 -0500

“I think it’s often been portrayed as artists versus pirates. That isn’t accurate at all. The recording industry and movie industry are infamous for stealing money from artists. I mean, the phrase “Hollywood accounting” is a cliché. And one of the ways that artists have managed to escape that is by going directly to their fans on the Internet. That’s very threatening to these middlemen who have been stealing some of the money. I think a big reason the movie studios want to have more control over the Internet is to shut it down as an alternative distribution mechanism, to put it back in the bottle and go back to the old ways where they can take their cut.”

- Aaron Swartz (via azspot)

Photo

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:51:40 -0500

Photo

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:03:44 -0500

Fuck this jowly, pompous dirt-bag.

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:00:40 -0500

Fuck this jowly, pompous dirt-bag.

Path assumes it can take what it wants from you. They feel free to steal your private information,...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:56:05 -0500

Path assumes it can take what it wants from you. They feel free to steal your private information, lie to you about it then throw artificial barriers in your way to prevent you from deleting your account. Path doesn’t have respect for it’s customers.

"Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In..."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:43:10 -0500

“Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending.”

- The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back (via azspot)

"As I looked backward and forward in time, however, I had to face this awkward fact: America became..."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:39:10 -0500

“As I looked backward and forward in time, however, I had to face this awkward fact: America became more culturally stable between 1910 and 1960 as it became less economically and socially libertarian. As it became more economically and socially libertarian after 1970, America became culturally less stable: “The greatest generation was also the statist generation. Like them or loathe them, the middle decades of the twentieth century were an entirely anomalous period in American history. Never had the state been so strong, never had people submitted as uncomplainingly, never had the country been more economically equal, never had it been more ethnically homogeneous, seldom was its political consensus more overpowering.””

- David Frum (via azspot)

Sometimes I think we, as a species, have made a mistake by not...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:32:59 -0500

Sometimes I think we, as a species, have made a mistake by not staying true this design style.

"Here’s the idea. Set up a trust for the movie industry. A bank account that we can deposit..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:39:00 -0500

“Here’s the idea. Set up a trust for the movie industry. A bank account that we can deposit money into but only movie-makers can withdraw from. When you download a movie via BitTorrent that you watch all the way to the end, deposit $5 into the account for the movie. When the owners decide to accept BitTorrent as a legitimate distribution system, which someday they are sure to, they can have the money. The amount of money in the account is always public info. So it becomes an important statistic, part of the “box office” for a movie. Then you’d probably find a funny thing happening — independent movie producers who can’t get distribution any other way will start promoting this site as a legitimate way to pay for movies. It wouldn’t take long before the MPAA realized that there are a huge number of people who want the convenience of watching movies at home on their own timetable, instead of having to deal with the inhumane system the movie industry created for them.”

- (via Scripting News - Dave Winer)

"Can one really claim they earned it the old-fashioned way when their father was CEO of one of the..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:37:03 -0500

“

Can one really claim they earned it the old-fashioned way when their father was CEO of one of the largest corporations on earth and at the head table of a political party?

The problem with the bootstrap myth is that it represents the assertion of autonomy.

The assertion of autonomy is entrenched in the secular faith that champions human sovereignty and self-sufficiency. It preaches radical self-reliance and denies a costly responsibility for others.

”

- (via Ethics Daily - Debunking the Bootstrap Myth)

"Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:27:06 -0500

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”

- Jonathan Franzen (via azspot)

Jonathan Franzen explaining why he’s slowly going to replace his print collection with novels chiselled into stone tablets.

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion,...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:13:09 -0500

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

(via Huffington Post)

And that my friends is how the game is played. My hat’s off to you Sen. Howell. You are awesome.

“…here and there among the conformist fat-cat crowds...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:59:21 -0500

“…here and there among the conformist fat-cat crowds is a lean cat or two looking like it might swing, given some encouragement.”

"The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:20:08 -0500

““The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized.””

- (via The New Yorker)

Tennessee is trying to pass a bill that makes it legal to bully homosexuals if you are religiously or morally against homosexuality. Please sign this petition.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:59:32 -0500

Tennessee is trying to pass a bill that makes it legal to bully homosexuals if you are religiously or morally against homosexuality. Please sign this petition.:

So this post makes it sound like you should support this. I’ll assume they didn’t intend that, a passionate mistype. It you do support it, you should be fucked in the eye socket by hyenas forever. Fight for equal rights. Always.